Associate Curator of Archaeological Science
South American Archaeology & Ethnology

Department of Anthropology, The Field Museum

Adjunct Professor of Anthropology
University of Illinois-Chicago
Northwestern University
University of Florida

Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Florida, 1997.
M. A., Anthropology, University of Florida, 1995.
B.A., Anthropology & Geography, Northwestern University, 1993.

Ryan Williams at Cerro Baul, Peru

Development of Sociopolitical Complexity in the South American Andes

How and why complex social systems develop, natural and social disasters and their effects on political development, interactions between prehistoric states, and the reasons for state collapse

Ryan Williams has conducted archaeological field research in Southern Peru for the past decade. Williams has directed research on ancient agricultural hydraulics in the Peruvian Andes and has collaborated on projects at Tiwanaku,
on Inka mummies, and on the earliest peoples of the Americas at Quebrada Tacahuay.

He currently leads excavations of the Wari administrative center of Cerro Baul (A. D. 600 - 1000), a mesa top
citadel in Tiwanaku territory. Funded first by the National Science Foundation and now by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the examination of political interaction is the primary theme of this research.

Williams is also interested in the regional analysis of settlement systems and uses geographic information systems and remote sensing applications to study the interaction between ancient peoples and their environments.

His focus on regional exchange networks also incorporates geochemical analyses of artifacts for characterizing provenience, production, and distribution of archaeological materials. To this end, he and several museum colleagues have recently acquired a major National Science Foundation grant to create an Elemental Analysis Facility at The Field Museum.